


Long Distance

by old_fashioned_gal



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Birdwatching, Friendship, Gen, Phone Calls & Telephones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-01-27
Packaged: 2018-05-16 17:45:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5834884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/old_fashioned_gal/pseuds/old_fashioned_gal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rorschach phones Dan while he's birdwatching in Africa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Long Distance

“Mr Dreiberg? I’m calling from the front desk. Phone call for you, sir”  
“...hello?” Dan sits up in an attempt to wake properly and immediately gets tangled in the mosquito net hanging artfully over the hotel bed. “What time is it?”  
“It’s…one in the morning, Mr Dreiberg. Will you accept a phone call?”  
“Hm? Err – yes. Yes of course. Thanks.” Who the hell could be calling him at 1 a.m.? Dan waits with no small amount of concern as the call connects with a series of clicks.  
“Daniel”  
Immediately, Dan is wide awake. “Rorschach!” He scrambles out from the netting, dragging the phone cord behind him. “How did you…” he begins, and then stops, because really, he doesn’t need to know how Rorschach got this number. He doesn’t want to ruin the first contact Rorschach has made in almost a year by making it sound like he isn’t pleased to hear from the guy. “I mean, hey man. It’s been a while”  
There is an unimpressed silence at the other end of the line. Dan almost asks if everything is okay, if Rorschach is in danger, but stops himself again. Rorschach wouldn’t call him for help. He asks, “How are you?” It seems a very stupid question to ask a borderline insane fugitive but at least it shows he gives a damn.  
“Not in prison”  
“Well, that’s…always good.” Dan sits down in an armchair by the window. “Aside from that?”  
“Same as always”  
“Uh huh” So that’s antisocial, unhygienic and getting into fights then. “You’re not calling to announce your retirement I take it?”  
“Obviously not. Still work to be done.”  
“Right” Wrong, thinks Dan, wrong and dangerous, but there is nothing to be gained from pushing the guy away.  
“You could come back Daniel. Contribute. Still a role for you.”  
Oh, so it’s this kind of phone call. Not a ‘Hi, how are you, miss you call’, but a ‘I need you to abandon your work and break the law with me’ one. The depressing thing is Dan recognises it from experience. “That’s um…buddy, that’s…” (Crazy. Stupid. Absolutely insane) “…flattering, really. But I’m actually in Africa, aside from anything else.”  
“So fly home”  
“It seems a bit out of my way just to get arrested.”  
“Daniel –”  
“Rorschach, we’ve been through this. What we do is illegal now and I’m not going to break the law. Please don’t ask again.”  
“Said ‘do’”  
“What?”  
“Said ‘do’, Daniel. Used present tense.”  
Damn. Dan can’t think of any convincing way to explain that (to himself, never mind Rorschach), other than, “Well it is one in the morning over here.”  
“Hrm. Apologies. Was not aware. Will let you sleep, Dani –”  
“No, no, don’t worry! Really, it’s good to hear from you.”  
There is a doubtful pause. Only Rorschach could make a silence convey doubt. The guy has as many different silences as he does improvised weaponry. Dan imagines him standing in a phone booth in his full costume, sulking into the phone. The image makes him smile in the dark hotel room, but he asks, “You’re somewhere safe aren’t you? You’re okay to talk?”  
A scornful huff at the other end. “Haven’t left for patrol yet, Daniel. Not phoning you from the open.”  
“Oh!” Dan suddenly realises it has to be seven o’clock in New York. “Of course. So you’re…” At home? Is Rorschach calling him from wherever he lives? Could Dan use dial back and find out where that is? Not that he would. Obviously.  
“At your house.” Rorschach informs him.  
“Oh. Okay. Well…make yourself at home.” Like Rorschach hasn’t already done that to the point of making an international phone call.  
“Appreciated”  
Dan’s mental image shifts from phone box to his couch. He pictures Rorschach tucking himself neatly into the corner of it like he always did, maybe lifting the mask a little to speak into the phone. Except, why would he be wearing the mask with no-one around? Was Rorschach unmasked in his house? Dan found the thought weirdly tantalising. Quickly, he distracted himself with, “How’s the place looking?”  
“Unlived in.”  
“I’ll bet. Could you, err, could you do me a favour and water the houseplants while you’re there?”  
“Dead already”  
“Figures.” Dan had decided not to ask Hollis to go out of his way every few days for the sake of some greenery, a decision that had essentially condemned the plants to death since there was no-one else to ask. Laurie or Adrian, maybe, but, like Hollis, they had better things to do. Dan hadn’t wanted to trouble them. He asks Rorschach, “So how are you really? Are you taking care of yourself?”  
“As much as necessary. Investigating disturbances at a warehouse in the docks. Also tracking a dealer using a delivery service as cover. Will move in once know who is running operation.”  
“Shit, a whole drugs ring by yourself?”  
“Or you could come back.”  
Well, he’s walked into that one. “I’m retired now, Rorschach. Like you should be.”  
“Retired to spend days idling in exotic clime staring at pigeons? Wasting your time, Daniel.”  
“Rorschach, I’m gathering data that will be used in future conservation work. It might be a drop in the ocean, but no more than one man fighting crime in a city as big as New York is.”  
“Can justify abandoning calling however you want, Daniel. Weren’t concerned about size of New York before Keene act.”  
Sinking deeper into the arm chair, Dan wonders how he can turn this conversation back to happier things. Is there even anything happy left in Rorschach’s life these days? Happy was probably been left behind back whenever personal hygiene and a healthy recognition of the need to sleep were dropped like disposable luxuries. “Come on, man, we haven’t spoken in ages – let’s not fight.”  
Surprisingly, Rorschach seems to accept this – “Fine, Daniel” – which makes Dan worry something is wrong after all. “You’re definitely okay to talk? You’re not injured or anything are you?”  
“If phoning for first aid advice, wouldn’t have commenced small talk.”  
So asking someone to fly halfway around the world to fight crime counts as small talk now. Not, Dan realises, that he and Rorschach had ever been masters of small talk. Even pre-Keene. Even pre-crazy. Sounding very close from across half the world, Rorschach tells him, “Calling because of the date.”  
“Wha…oh! Oh yeah!” Dan grins into the phone. “That’s…wow, has it been twelve years now?”  
“Twelve years today” Rorschach confirms.  
Dan laughs. “I wonder if Big Figure knows?” Petty as it seems, he kind of likes to think Big Figure has spent the anniversary of his arrest being annoyed. God knows the man deserves it.  
“Possibly” Rorschach replies. “Hear he runs Sing Sing now, even has guards at his beck and call.” There is a pause, and then: “Should have killed him.”  
It’s all Dan can do not to swear down the phone. “For God’s sake!”  
“True, Daniel.”  
“No! No, you might be killing people now, but we didn’t do that! We were better than that.”  
“Let scum live. Nothing to be proud of.”  
“Well I’m proud of it! I’m proud of everything we achieved! And I don’t want you turning around and saying you’re not just because we did it without resorting to murder.”  
The silence at the other end speaks volumes, but Dan isn’t entirely sure what the volumes are of. Is Rorschach disgusted at his mercy or approving of how much he valued the memory of their partnership? Come to think of it, is Rorschach also proud of those memories on some level? Probably not. “I guess you’re going to say we achieved nothing.”  
“Would never say that, Daniel.”  
“You wouldn’t? I thought we just ‘let scum live’?”  
“Mercy shown to the undeserving was regrettable. But don’t regret rest of it.”  
“You don’t?” Dan hears his smile bleed into his tone.  
“Wouldn’t phone you if regretted it.”  
“Good. Anyway, I’m glad you called.”  
“Made good team”  
“We did, didn’t we?”  
“Could come back still.” Rorschach repeats. “Contribute.”  
Dan notes the wording. He could come back to (break the law, get arrested, go to jail to hang out with Big Figure) contribute, but not to rekindle the partnership. That had died out before Keene came along. “I’m happy here, thanks.”  
“Happiness is irrelevant. Needed here. Neglecting duty, Daniel.”  
“Take it up with Senator Keene, buddy” Immediately, Dan, regrets saying that, because what if Rorschach did?  
Rorschach lays that fear to rest with, “Apologist for crime is relevant. You abandoned your post.”  
“Hey, I wasn’t under any obligation to do any of it. I could have quit before Keene if I wanted to, like Adrian.”  
“Know you were tempted to.”  
“I really wasn’t. I’m just saying I didn’t have an official post to abandon. No-one appointed me.” Dan frowns and adds, “Well, I appointed me”  
“And now given in to liberal tendencies, decided to excuse crime instead of challenge it.”  
Really, Dan is more in the mood to excuse Rorschach instead of challenge him, if it means this depressing phone call could be wrapped up. Rorschach isn’t himself these days, to the point that Dan might as well have been talking to a vengeful spirit. Wearily, he replies, “Now masks have been outlawed. I’m not going to break the law. Like I’ve told you already.” Then, his temper waking up, “What do you mean excuse crime? When did I ever do that?”  
“Often. Would make sympathetic inferences about childhoods of younger scum. Bought that shoplifter deodorant.”  
“That was one time!” Dan thought back to what seemed like a hundred years ago, to when a fleeing shoplifter who crossed their path early one winter patrol had turned out to be a fourteen year old kid stealing a can of deodorant because his undeniably sweaty odour was getting him laughed at in school. Dan had rectified the situation by paying for the deodorant and Rorschach had muttered darkly about going too easy on the degenerate youth. Come to think of it, Rorschach couldn’t have been that old himself at the time. Dan assumes his ex-partner is a similar age to himself. They were both young and unspoilt back then, just starting out and expecting to fix all their city’s problems by thumping them. “You didn’t actually stop me buying it, Rorschach. I’m just saying.”  
“Was young and soft.”  
“Whatever. I know what you’re trying to do and it’s not going to work. I’m not going to get back into vigilantism just to prove I never wanted to quit. Because, in case you didn’t notice, it’s now against the law.”  
“Cowardly excuse, Daniel.”  
Dan draws in his breath to let out a tirade and then masters his temper; lets it out again in a hiss. “Did you wake me up in the middle of the night to make me miserable on purpose, or is it just a happy by-product?” He half expects Rorschach to say that if he’s miserable he might as well come back to New York and be miserable there. Remarkably, though, Rorschach answers in the tone of someone trying to make amends: “Didn’t intend to cause misery.” There’s a pause, and then: “How’s Africa?”  
“Oh, it’s great” Dan likes to think he’d be able to inject more enthusiasm into that assertion if it wasn’t for having been woken up so early. Sitting up and mustering the energy to elaborate he adds, “We’ve been trekking up river observing African Darters. They’re so beautiful – I’m not sure how to describe them…”  
“Like birds?”  
“Well yeah” Dan yawns. “Big, beautiful, graceful birds. Somewhere between a heron and a swan if you can picture that. One of them was right next to me my first day here; I could have reached out and touched it. And we’ve been studying Hooded vultures as well” Dan feels himself warming to his subject. “Less beautiful but so important and so underappreciated. And – you’ll never believe it – last week we went on a nocturnal trek and saw a Pel’s fishing owl!”  
“Do believe it. Were out looking for birds.”  
“But they’re really rare! I was telling myself not to get my hopes up about even seeing one and then we see it close up the very first night time trek! We’d only been out an hour and there he was, sitting by the river. Everyone started clicking their cameras at him and he just turned his face towards us and away again like a celebrity who was used to all the attention. You can imagine how excited I was.”  
“Can imagine” Rorschach agrees.  
“And then there’s the other animals! Yesterday there was this lizard right outside my window. I don’t know what species he was, but he had this beautiful blue head.”  
“Hurm”  
“And obviously with studying the vultures we’ve seen plenty of hyenas as well because they take first pick of the carcass. They’re bigger than you imagine when you see pictures.”  
“Hm. Safe there?”  
“What? Yeah, we stay in the range rover to observe the vultures. Not that hyenas deserve all their bad press anyway.”  
“Don’t mean from wildlife: Heard there’s a war in Africa.”  
“Rorschach, I don’t know what country you’ve been reading about in the New Frontiersman, but I’m in Botswana. They haven’t had a war here this whole century.”  
“Ennk. Was only showing concern.”  
“Yeah, I know. Sorry buddy. But you don’t need to worry: I’m safe here.” Which is more than can be said for Rorschach, but if he points that out, Dan knows he’s just providing yet another opening for Rorschach to invite him back into vigilantism. “Listen, I need to go and get some sleep before my alarm call. Take care of yourself, okay? Help yourself to anything in the pantry.”  
“Have done, Daniel.”  
“Good. Is the…is the front door, um, intact?”  
“Came in through tunnel entrance. Wouldn’t test security while you’re unable to repair collateral damage.”  
“Thanks for that. So are you patrolling now?”  
“Obviously.” There is a barely concealed resentment in Rorschach’s voice, an unspoken but very loud ‘like you should be’ tacked on the end of the answer.  
“Well, be careful out there. And happy, um, Big Figure anniversary I guess.”  
“Hrm. Stupid name for it, Daniel.” Then the line goes dead, cutting Dan off from telling Rorschach to stay at the brownstone as long as he needs and instantly re-establishing the sense of there being thousands of miles of ocean between them.  
Dan clambers back under the mosquito net but can’t sleep. His thoughts are stretched far away, back across distance and time, to well before 1977. Outside the window, dawn wakes and deepens into daylight and insects chirp and click. Bugs sound the same the world over.  
It was, Dan knows, a left-over hunger for adventure that brought him here. He had fancied himself the intrepid explorer hacking his way through the jungle. Reality has made him a mild-mannered tourist. Turns out he’s still Dan Dreiberg wherever he is on the planet.  
He returns home a few weeks later, to bills on his doormat, dirty dishes in the sink and a new, thriving houseplant on the kitchen table.


End file.
